One Helpful Little Guy...

I just had a flashback to a memory from when I was a little boy and I wanted to record it here before I forget it again.

I think that this story happened somewhere around 1982 - 1983. I was seven or eight years old.

It was a sunny, summer day on some Saturday morning. I know it was the weekend, because I was not in school on that day and I was visiting with my dad. My parents divorced when I was three years old. I can't remember them ever living together. But I do remember many, many weekends that I either spent with my mom or my dad. They alternated weekends.

And so this story takes place on one of the weekends with my dad. A bright, sunny Saturday morning. I know it was Saturday and not Sunday because this story takes place in a church parking lot. And the church parking lot would've been occupied on a Sunday morning. In my memory, the church parking lot was almost entirely empty.

My dad was always good with his hands. He still is. He built the house that he lives in now and the house that he lived in before this one. He added first one deck and then another onto his current house. He has installed coy ponds and swinging seats and gardens and a shed and a cozy swing for two in the tree line behind his house. He loves his tool shed. I give him tools for Christmas presents. Nothing makes him happier than when he's working on some little project.

When I was a little boy, my dad spent his weekends working on housing crews with his best friend, Larry. He and Larry were childhood friends. They grew up together in a suburb of Louisville. Later, in their middle age, they would part ways. They rarely speak these days. Of course, Larry led a very hard life, living in trailer parks, committing his first and only wife to a mental institution and living out his remaining days as the "paint guy" at an Ace Hardware in the backhills of Kentucky. As you read this, Larry is probably chipping paint out of the automatic mixer and not thinking at all about where else he could be or how else his life could be. A very sad story.

On this Saturday in 1982 or 1983, Dad and Larry were still best friends and were working on a project together. Dad and Larry had taken on a side job to make a little extra cash. They were patching up holes in the shingles on the top of a rather large, steep church. They were probably getting a hundred bucks apiece to spend the day up on this church's roof, dragging around single sheets of shingles to the holes in the roof, tearing out the old, decayed shingles and nailing in place the new shingles. Just an easy Saturday morning gig, doing some good for this little church.

While they worked, I sat in the cab of the truck, sipping on a Yoo Hoo and nibbling on Hostess cupcakes. I also had a stack of brand new comics books with me to read while they worked on the roof. It wasn't uncommon for my dad to buy me a stack of comics to act as a babysitter. If I had a good stack of my regular titles, I would stay put for a few hours, seeing what Captain America was up to or who was Spiderman chasing after this month or what crazy plot twist was happening over in Detective Comics. Load me up with some chocolately goodness and you would know where I was going to be for a good couple of hours.

I remember that it was summer and the sky was blue and cloudless.
I remember that the truck, a beat-up old orange monster that my dad drove until it died, was still pretty cool in the shade of a big tree on the edge of the parking lot.
I remember that the blue UV shading on the windshield made a solid, blue band on my chubby knees and thigh.
I remember trying very hard NOT to get chocolate icing on the pages of my new comics.
I remember that the wind was high and that I worried for a bit that my dad and Larry might be blown off of the roof, four stories up. I didn't need to worry, they hunkered down to the roof and scurried around like crabs, giving the wind nothing to grab onto.

I recall very clearly that I was in the middle of an Archie comics that I wasn't really interested in, when the wind caught their ladder and blew it off of the roof. It slowly slid to the left and then clattered down on the church's lawn. The sound of the metal clattering to the ground scared me and I looked around to see what had happened. Up on the roof, my dad and Larry knew exactly what had happened. They made their way over to the edge and looked down. They were four stories up in the air, trapped on the roof with no flat surfaces to sit on and nobody to call to, to help them. This was before cell phones, so that wasn't an option.

Later, my dad told me what they talked about up there. Larry suggested that they use their hammers to break into the belfry and bang on the church bells until someone came. But that would do more damage to the roof that they were supposed to be fixing. And there was no guarantee that it would bring anyone at all. The church was down a little backroad that had very sporadic traffic on it. They could be trapped up there for a while. With luck, someone would see them and come help before it got dark. With no lights up there, the steep black roof would be treacherous in the dark.

Finally, my dad said, "Well, there's nothing we can do about it now. Let's finish the roof and then deal with the ladder when we get done." He later said that he was thinking that one of them could lower himself over one of the sides and hope to find a ledge to climb down from, but that he didn't plan for this and had no idea what the side of the church looked like. That would be very, very dangerous, but it was all he could think of.

In the cab of the truck, I wasn't reading comics anymore. I was watching my dad and Uncle Larry on the roof. I could see them standing at the edge of the roof, which scared me pretty badly. I could see them talking and pointing down at the ladder. Finally, the turned and went back to the pile of shingles and got back to work. I understood what had happened. The ladder had fallen and my dad was trapped on the roof. I knew with absolute clarity that I was the only person there to help them.

I got out of the cab of the truck and made my way over to the ladder. At it's full extension, the ladder was over thirty feet tall. I went to the end and lifted it as high as I could, which was right up to my belly. Nowhere near high enough to put the ladder in place. I had to drop it down and think of something else.

I walked over to the two lane road that ran along the edge of the property. I thought that I was going to need an adult to help me with the ladder. I sat down on a large rock marking the edge of the church property and waited for the next car to come by. Maybe I could talk them into pulling over and helping me.

I can't remember what kind of car came by first, but they misunderstood my frantic waving and waved back at me as they drove by. A busy adult waving back at a sweet, church-going kid. The next car, though, a dark, forest green truck, slowed down as the driver realized that I was trying to flag him down. He slowly eased into the mouth of the parking lot and rolled down his passenger window. He was an older fellow. A grandfather type. Wearing denim and a flannel shirt and a neat, white moustache on his face. He looked concerned for me.

"Hey there, young fella. Is everything okay?" he looked around the parking lot to see if someone was hurt or chasing me or otherwise in need of assistance.

I walked over to the open window and said, "My dad is working on this church roof. His ladder fell down. Can you help me put it back up there for him?" The truck driver looked up at the two young men working hard on the roof of the church, and the lawn with the ladder laying flat on it and understood what I needed.

"I think I can help," he said and he slowly pulled the truck into the parking lot. He parked right next to my dad's truck. The door swung open. He put two hands on the door frame of his truck and pulled himself out, as big, older men do. I was waiting for him over in the grass. We walked over to the ladder and he easily hefted the end of it, walking down the ladder as it raised over both of our heads. He pivoted it on one of it's legs and walked it into place. It made a satisfying "clunk" sound as it settled against the church's rain gutter.

My dad heard this and came over to the edge. He saw me and the older man standing down at the bottom of the ladder, looking up at him. He waved down at the older man and said, "Thanks, fella. We really appreciate it."

"Don't thank me. Thank this little guy. He flagged me down and asked me to come help." and the older guy patted me on the head affectionately.

"That's my son," said my dad and he looked down on me and smiled.

"Well, he's one helpful little guy," and the old guy walked back to his truck and pulled out of the parking lot, waving once out of his window as he drove away.

My dad came down from the roof and hugged me to him. He thanked me for being so smart and for getting him out of a jam. He admitted that he was pretty scared up there and that he didn't know how he was going to get down. And he hugged me and thanked me and generally made a fuss over me and I felt so proud to have done a good thing for my dad.

Later, he retold the story to my stepmom over dinner. She wasn't all that impressed. But, her lack of enthusiasm didn't dim my pride, at all. My dad was proud of me. That was all that mattered to me.